You are looking at posts that were written in the month of September in the year 2007.
Posted on September 29th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
I am, as I have mentioned*, much less assiduous about keeping up with current music than I was a few years ago. Not out of a lack of inclination*, but a lack of time, and an increased focus on exploring music of the past.
Right now my favorite album of the year is Pinback's Autumn of the Seraphs. I have a weakness for intricately patterned songs that could be described as infectious grooves in formal straitjackets, and if you make a consistently good album full of them (Pell Mell's Interstate, Spoon's Girls Can Tell, Komeda's What Makes It Go), I'm likely to get obsessive about it. Rob Crow has been a riff factory since his earliest days with Heavy Vegetable; Pinback have a burnished, smooth surface, powered with seemingly effortless invention. Autumn of the Seraphs is hypnotically catchy from start to finish, and is the album I think I'm most likely to come back to with undiminished pleasure for years.
If it weren't for Autumn of the Seraphs, either Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? or Modest Mouse's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank would be unimpeachable albums of the year. The Of Montreal album explores new emotional and musical palettes for Kevin Barnes, who is musically my favorite pop songwriter of his time, and it's his best batch of songs since The Gay Parade. Modest Mouse have leapt so high with their most recent two albums that I realized I may have to consider them my favorite rock band (in the wake of the breakup of Sleater-Kinney); last year I would've said Spoon, but the most recent two Spoon albums feel like the band is running in place while Modest Mouse have exploded forward.
Edited* to add: How could I have forgotten to mention Gogol Bordello's Super Taranta!, which belongs with the two above. Bitingly funny songs, awesomely energetic folk-punk attack, and a vocalist who sounds like Rowlf the Dog with a Russian accent. I wish I'd taken a hyperfan friend's recommendation and seen them live several years ago, because the hype is growing fast this year. Super Taranta! isn't as consistent as the albums above, but its peaks are breathtaking.
Hovering right behind are Dizzee Rascal's Maths and English (musically amazing, but the subject matter -- being a star, how to be a star, those other phoneys, etc -- is uninspiring), and Arctic Monkeys' Favourite Worst Nightmare (mainstreamed postpunk, witty, improvement on solid debut). I'm still getting my head around the new Animal Collective and Fiery Furnaces albums, but they sound like they're going to be well up the list once I've absorbed them. The new Wilco, Spoon, Art Brut, and Ted Leo are solid, enjoyable albums, not great but good. The Spoon and the Ted Leo haven't added any favorite songs (yet) for me to their extensive legacies, which is somewhat disappointing. The Wilco album has got some of their best stuff, but I'm not as big a fan of their best stuff as I am of Leo and Spoon. I probably haven't given the Art Brut as much attention yet as I should.
What else should I make a point of hearing this year?
Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
This morning I was browsing Helen Reddy's songs on my mp3 player, and suddenly realized that "I Am Woman" was missing. I knew I hadn't deleted it. I looked through the original files on my computer for the 1970s Survival Project -- supposedly the Billboard top 100 for every year in the 1970s. It wasn't there either.
"I Am Woman" was a number-one single. There is no way it wasn't one of the top 100 singles of 1972 by any reasonable calculation. (For example, Charley Pride's "Kiss an Angel Good Morning", which is on the 1972 list, peaked at number 21.) So I figured, crap, the whole 1970s Survival Project is hosed. If a big hit like that was missing, there must be others; there must be rights problems or something, and the compilers just quietly removed songs and renumbered the list.
But after cursory checking, I wasn't able to find any other obvious omissions. Earth Wind & Fire's version of "Got to Get You into My Life", for example, isn't among the mp3s in my 1970s set; it peaked at number 9, and maybe should be among the top 100 of 1978, but I don't have Billboard's lists, so can't be sure.
"I Am Woman", though, obviously should be there. So what I'm wondering is, did Billboard just screw up at the time they made their year-end list? Does anyone reading this have the Billboard year-end charts?
(For the record, I like "I Am Woman" and it would have survived a few plays and possibly made my top 300, definitely not my top 100.)
Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
Things have been slow here, I know. I have been obsessed for the past couple weeks with our new digital camera. I didn't expect it to take over my life, even briefly. I've discovered that it's an excellent tool for shoring up my awful memory, so I've been spending almost all my free time learning to use it. Most of that stuff appears over at Memory Machine, my weblog that's not about music and words (as such), just random observations and life tracking.
More soon.
Posted on September 19th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Oracles, Boring Posts.
The fictional names of spam senders are mostly amusing to the recipient and no one else, inasmuch as everyone has the opportunity to be (briefly) amused by these absurdities in their own overflowing inboxes. So I note almost entirely for my own amusement the email I received today from Grackle L. Pigging.
Posted on September 17th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Lists, Comedy.
Abba: The vowels in their name stood for vowels in the group members' names as well.
The Velvet Underground: Introduced zeugma into rock lyrics.
The Monkees: I think the "y" in monkey is voiced like a consonant, don't you? Yuh. Monkey-yuh. Right? So they picked up a vowel here.
The The: Still cracks me up! The The. The The The The The. The.
Van Der Graaf Generator: The doubled "a" is surprisingly common among Dutch bands, but is eschewed by Frisians.
Van Morrison: Not actually a band, but a person. His real name is Van.
Ebn-Ozn: Lost two of their vowels in a lawsuit, sparking their satiric masterpiece "AEIOU and Sometimes Y".
Styx. Name doesn't look like it has any vowels, yet it does. Look closely.
AEIOU: The only band name to have all the standard vowels of the alphabet, in alphabetical order!
XTC. Technically not qualified for the list, but I didn't think I could leave them off.
Posted on September 16th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
Song Project #18
Tuxedomoon were possibly the most straightforwardly pretentious band on the arty but goofy Ralph Records label in the late 1970s, best known for the Residents and also featuring underground expermentalists like Snakefinger, Renaldo and the Loaf, Fred Frith, Yello, and MX-80 Sound. Tuxedomoon were less silly and more moody than most of their labelmates; over time their various members tended toward soundscapes, but early Tuxedomoon records were recognizably songs, albeit pretty odd songs.
"Crash" is an instrumental, the b-side of their great single "What Use?", probably their best known song. "Crash" was not included on either of Tuxedomoon's (excellent) first two albums, Half-Mute and Desire; so far as I can tell, it only ever appeared on two Tuxedomoon records, neither of which was ever issued on cd: the Tuxedomoon compilation A Thousand Lives By Picture, and the Ralph Records compilation Frank Johnson's Favorites. In the time I've had no turntable -- most of the last fifteen years -- I had fruitlessly searched for "Crash", because it's one of my favorite instrumental rock songs ever. I never found it on peer-to-peer networks, though frustratingly I found several copies of another mix of the song, which were very different and lacked the power of the one I knew.
But! a few months ago some wonderful person uploaded an early 1980s album called Night Air by keyboardist / violinist / guitarist Blaine L. Reininger, co-founder of Tuxedomoon. Though I had a few later Reininger records, I'd never seen this one, and it included this copy of "Crash", which -- hurrah! -- is absolutely the version I knew and loved. So at this point I'm unsure whether to list it as Tuxedomoon or Reininger -- but the physical records I had credited it to Tuxedomoon, so I'm going with that for now.
"Crash" is a simple song, alternating between two parts, each of which winds up tension and releases it repeatedly. A guitar howls throughout, a layer of melodic noise behind the lead piano. Drum rolls punctuate the end of every passage. The two piano hooks are a simple ascending and descending line, and a down-up, down-up, UP-down-down-down-down-down one. No bridge, no coda, no intro, really, just a kind of fade-in. What makes it work so intensely for me, I think, is the layer of tension the guitar lays on. While the piano releases its melodic tension every time it winds it up, the guitar just keeps squawling, never letting go. I think my favorite moment of the song is when the second part has been going on for bar after bar after bar -- the first part was relatively short -- and finally explodes back into the first part at 3:08, after the guitar has drifted up to one long high howl. That transition comes back around again at 4:08; if I had any complaint about the song, it would be a wish that they'd go through the changes again one more time. If you listen to "Crash" a second time, check out the restlessness of the drumming, which constantly plays small variations on the beat, never enough to break the rhythm, coloring the song just under the immediately perceived surface. One last thing: I love the way the song sits there and vibrates just a little after the cold stop at the end, humming like a great machine.
Posted on September 15th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Quotes.
Now, to this declared fact that there are no more than thirty-six dramatic situations, is attached a singular corollary, the discovery that there are in life but thirty-six emotions. A maximum of thirty-six emotions -- and therein we have all the savor of existence; there we have the unceasing ebb and flow which fills human history like tides of the sea; which is, indeed, the very substance of history, since it is the substance of humanity itself, in the shades of African forests as Unter den Linden or beneath the electric lights of the Boulevards; as it was in the ages of man's hand-to-hand struggle with the wild beasts of wood and mountain, and as it will be, indubitably, in the most infinitely distant future, since it is with these thirty-six emotions -- no more -- that we color, nay, we comprehend, cosmic mechanism, and since it is from them that our theogonies and our metaphysics are, and ever will be, constructed; all our dear and fanciful "beyonds" -- thirty-six situations, thirty-six emotions, and no more.--Georges Polti, The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations
Posted on September 12th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Music Criticism, 70s Survival.
No one wants to hear that something they like is crap. People will come to that conclusion on their own -- and often enough enjoy the crap anyway -- but no one, expressing a sincere appreciation of something, is interested in being told why it's crap. And why should they be? If someone shows me how to like something, they have enlarged my life. What do they do for me by teaching me how to dislike something? Especially since what I've been probably taught is not how to dislike something but why. The visceral reaction -- I like it -- will remain, even if I am only muttering it to myself.
Of course there are good reasons to write negative criticism. It's useful to explore the way one's own taste works; it can articulate things for other people who share your reaction; there are few things that are perfect, and analyzing flaws is interesting, and can improve one's appreciation of things one likes; etc. But anyone who trashes something and thinks they're setting anyone straight -- thinks they're doing anything other than writing for the people who agree with them -- is fooling themself. I write some cutting things, but I don't imagine or hope to change anyone's mind. I'll defend my opinions only as things that are there, not the whole thing; part of the truth, not The Truth.
A friend reacted with incredulity to my assertion that the Captain and Tennille's version of "Shop Around" could stand with the original. (By which, to be clear, I don't mean it's necessarily the equal of the original; I mean that it does not shame the original, and more than adequately justifies its own existence.) The friend said his faith in my taste was badly shaken -- I'm not sure how rhetorically he meant this -- and invited me to convince him. This didn't make me angry -- it's par for the course in casual music opinion-slinging -- but it did solidify a position I've been working toward for years. Which is: I'm not going to justify my reactions, and I'm not going to try to convince anyone. Explain, yes -- this is why I like what I like -- but not justify; not participate in the social hierarchy of taste, not try to move the Captain and Tennille up the ladder nor put deodorant powder on the stink of my appreciation for them. Your resistance is your own, and I'm not going to make extra effort to overcome it.
I invited the response by saying "yes it is" after my initial assertion: a rhetorical acknowledgment that I was making an extraordinary claim that was bound to be questioned. I oughtn't do that. I am interested in explorations of the social hierarchies of taste -- the kind Phil Ford does at Dial M for Musicology, for example -- but I want to keep those hierarchies out of my own reactions to music. Much of the point of the Seventies Song Survival project is to come at everything with fresh ears, as much as possible. Hearing the Captain and Tennille's cover of "Shop Around" as though for the first time was exciting, intensely pleasurable, a kind of joy. And I'm long past the point of needing to define myself to others by my taste in art.
Posted on September 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, 70s Survival.
A few random observations from the Seventies Song Survival Project, things of which I was inadequately aware until listening attentively with headphones:
Posted on September 8th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Barbra Streisand, Evergreen
I admit that this is an impressively complex melody, a great tune for a great singer, and it's beautiful. I don't hate it. But it's too schmaltzy for me to enjoy much, especially since the lyrics don't move me. I love the coda, though. It makes me feel it's not a waste to sit through the song.
Keith Carradine, I'm Easy
I like this song, just not enough to keep hearing it. Very nice acoustic guitar playing, and a melody, lyrics, and mood that remind me of good James Taylor songs. I hadn't known that we have Robert Altman to thank for Carradine's brief music career: he heard Carradine's songs, cast him in Nashville, and put several of his songs on the soundtrack. Actors' hit songs are often dire, but this is a decent exception.
Ringo Starr, Oh My My
A pleasant, bouncy song. Wouldn't be out of place on a decent pub-rock album; odd to hear this as an American hit.
Bay City Rollers, Money Honey
True one-hit wonders are rare, notwithstanding VH1's generous definition. Bands we think of as one-hit wonders are usually like this: First, an awesome hit single that everybody remembers. Second, a not-terrible follow-up from the same album, which is a smaller hit because while everybody wants it to be great it's just okay. Third, a song from the second album, which does okay and signals the commercial end of the band's career. This is the second song.
Shaun Cassidy, Da Doo Ron Ron
Listened to all the way through out of duty.
Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots, Disco Duck
Duty aided by a drink. If there's anything worse than a limp cover by a teen idol, it's a trend novelty song. Even by the standard of, say, Ray Stevens, this song is awful. I'd go into detail, but then I'd be a guy writing in depth about "Disco Duck".
Posted on September 3rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Kenny Rogers, She Believes In Me
"I stay out late at night and play my songs / and sometimes other nights can be so long." Poetry. Boy, this is a gloopy song. There's nothing about the melody or arrangement worth mentioning, and the lyrics rival "Beth" for self-involved musician paying lip service to the woman who loves him: "I told her someday if she was my girl I could change the world with my little songs. I was wrong. But she has faith in me, and so I go on trying faithfully; and who knows, maybe on some special night, if my song is right, I will find a way, find a way." Her faith in him, though, is shaky: "While she lays crying, I fumble with a melody or two." She certainly has reason to be jealous: "I stumble to the kitchen for a bite, then I see my old guitar in the night, just waiting for me like a secret friend, and there's no end." It's unclear what there's no end of. Molasses, maybe. She comes back around, though: "She says to wake her up when I am through. God our love is true." Well, hers anyway. Strings: Yes. Portentous drum fills: Yes. Written by a fellow named Steve Gibb, though not the heavy-metal playing son of Barry.
Peaches & Herb, Shake Your Groove Thing
Reasonably funky. I don't think I can spin you like a top while shaking my groove thing, though. The verse is in two parts, and there's an odd little key-change (I think) bridge that descends in steps ("there's nothing more that I like to do"), followed by a horn break and the second part of the verse near the end. It's more musically interesting than a lot of disco, but the only part I like a lot is the bridge.
Five women have played Peaches opposite Herb Fame; this was the third Peaches, Linda Greene. "Shake Your Groove Thing" was written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris. Perren was part of the Corporation, the songwriting team that wrote hits for the Jackson 5. Perren is all over the hits of the late seventies, co-writing "I Will Survive", "If I Can't Have You", "Boogie Fever", "More Than a Woman", "Reunited", "Love Machine", and many other hits.
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Wake Up Everybody (Part 1)
A McFadden & Whitehead song. Not bad, kinda groovy. Cool harp-like keyboard glissandos at he beginning. Nice rhythm section. One of those earnest songs that meander wordily because it needs to fill out lines ("the world has changed so very much from what it used to be"), and reaches for rhymes that bring the sentiment down with a thud ("the only thing we have to do is put it in our minds / surely things will work out, they do it every time"), and awkward rhymes on unstressed syllables ("there is so much hatred, war and pover-tee"). And then there's the exhortation to the doctors: "Make the old people well. They're the ones who suffer and who catch all the hell. They don't have so very long before their judgment day. Won't you make them happy before they pass away?" Under the morbidity, I think the idea here is that if we can't cure old people of being old, maybe we should give them happy drugs. Anyway, one good lyric in a song whose heart is in the right place: "The world won't get no better if we just let it be." (So, uh, forget what I said about things just working out every time if we think good thoughts.)
Tom T. Hall, I Love
Let's get something straight right away: Tom T. Hall is one of the great American songwriters. "Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On", "I Hope It Rains at My Funeral", "I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew", "Salute to a Switchblade", "I Flew Over Our House Last Night", "Hang Them All", not to mention "Harper Valley PTA": that's just a beginning. Tom T. Hall is a treasure. That said, "I Love" is a serious contender for worst song by a great songwriter. It has the depth of a Hallmark card. It cries out for parody ("I, love, mangled baby ducks, rubber hockey pucks, tennis shoes that fit, and grit"). It is thankfully short -- two minutes six seconds, all verse and no chorus, unless "and I love you too" qualifies as a chorus -- and I doubt it took him much longer to write. It is pure sentiment, ungrounded in story or character. Strings: Yes. Key change: Yes. Profound: You be the judge.
New York City, I'm Doin' Fine Now
You could make a reggae song out of this pretty easily with that guitar just hitting the three beat every measure. There's strings and horns all over the place, not just coloring the song but carrying the melody. The arrangement has a lot of attention to detail but nothing arresting; the lyrics are neither good nor bad. It's hard to hear what made this a hit, especially by an unknown band. A Thom Bell production, which certainly helps. Their road band included Rodgers & Edwards pre-Chic.
Tony Orlando, Tie a Yellow Ribbon
Velma and I just last night watched Michael O'Donohue's Saturday Night Live "impression" of Tony Orlando and Dawn with fifteen-inch needles plunged through their eyes. Anyway. It is weird how this song -- the number one song of 1973 -- loaned its metaphor to people welcoming the Iran hostages home, inasmuch as the song is about a guy coming home from prison. If I were a hostage, or a soldier in Iraq, I don't think I'd appreciate the equivalence. It's one of those cheesy songs that it's hard to hear with fresh ears. My enjoyment of the bouncy melody is undercut by the smarminess of Orlando's delivery -- I swear I can hear the glittering suit -- and the uneasy marriage of the chipperness of the melody (and the oompah bassline) with the anxious lyrics. (By the way, could he not receive letters in jail? Was he in solitary for three years?) I like the way the verse modulates (if I am using the word correctly) into the chorus, and the harmonica. I'm a sucker for harmonica. Dawn barely make it into the song, and I don't think it would have been any less popular without them.
Pete Hamill, who'd written a piece called "Going Home" about an ex-convict looking for a yellow handkerchief tied to an oak, sued for infringement even though he admitted he'd heard the story in oral tradition. He lost.
Rhythm Heritage, Theme from S.W.A.T.
Curtis Mayfield lite. Man, I loved this when I was a kid. It's still pretty great as tv themes go: it's got two main riffs, each of which is memorable, and the connecting passages between the riffs are nicely executed, too. It does have a dull (but brief) bridge that briefly sounds like it's going to break into "Brickhouse" and instead just sways in place for about fifteen seconds, apparently as an excuse to work in silly siren and car skidding noises. Both of the main riffs are so simple that they wear out easily, and after a few plays I'm ready to let this one go. Written by Barry de Vorzon, who I had only previously known as the cowriter of "The Young and the Restless" (aka "Nadia's Theme"), but was also the lead singer for the Tamerlanes on their 1963 hit "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight."
Posted on September 1st, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy.
(archiving another old piece.)
Personal to roadnotes: You were in my dream last night, telling me about how you could predict the future by the patterns you saw in the stubble in your hair as it grew back between shaves. Is this true? --Misia
(Scene: Casa deSelby Bowen. Velma standing, head up, eyes closed, back straight, razor held aloft. Scraps as supplicant, bearing can of shaving cream.)
Acolyte: What news, Lady?
Seeress: I see.... righteousness and recrimination.... petulance.... a stagnant pool of blather.... a sea of ellipses.... drama.... drama.... (clutching head) Oh! the spelling.... my eyes....
Acolyte: Lady, do not go there.
Seeress: You overstep, impertinent one. We cannot deny that which is velcroed to our very souls. Bring me the leering drunken stoat.
Acolyte: (troubled) Lady....
Seeress: The stoat!
Acolyte: As you will. (proffers stoat)
Seeress: (rubbing stoat vigorously upon scalp) Ach! It is worse than I feared. Asshats are on the march, partying unashamedly in the sacred soup of the discourse. Fenderheads menace all that is barely tolerable. Infelicity abounds. Correction must be dispensed.
Acolyte: (gazing in wonder) Are the Cranky Times upon us, Lady?
Seeress: Yea, it is so. But heads will adorn pikes ere morning. Come. (sweeps imperiously from room. muttering:) "Just your opinion" my fuzzy brown butt.
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